2002 winner: BINYAVANGA WAINAINA

On winning the Caine Prize, Binyavanga set up a literary magazine, Kwani?, to publish work by new Kenyan writers. One of its first stories, by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, won the 2003 Caine Prize and one of 2004’s shortlisted stories, by Parselelo Kantai, was also published in Kwani?. In 2003, the Kenya Publisher’s Association presented Binyavanga with an award in recognition of his contributions to Kenyan literature.

Binyavanga has written for The East African, National Geographic, The Sunday Times (South Africa), The New York Times, The Guardian (UK) and Granta. He is currently Director of the Chinua Achebe Center for African Writers and Artists at Bard College, New York. His play Shine Your Eye, part of the Africa Trilogy, opened in Toronto in June 2010. His first book One Day I will Write About this Place, a memoir, was published by Graywolf Press in the US, Granta Books in 2011 and Kwani in 2012

PREVIOUSLY SHORTLISTED WRITERS

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Nigeria), shortlisted in 2002, won the Commonwealth First Book Prize in 2005 for her novel Purple Hibiscus, published by Harper Perennial, which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize in 2004. Chimamanda won the 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction, for her second novel Half of a Yellow Sun. A collection of her short stories The Thing Around Your Neck was published by Fourth Estate in 2009. Her short story "Ceiling" was included in the 2011 edition of The Best American Short Stories. Her third novel, Americanahwas shortlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction 2014.

Uwem Akpan (Nigeria) was shortlisted in 2007. His book Say You’re One of Them was published by Little Brown and translated in to 10 languages. It won the Best First Book award in the Africa region of the Commonwealth Literature Prize in 2009 and was critically acclaimed by Oprah Winfrey on Oprah’sBook Club the same year, prompting it to reach the top of the New York Times bestseller list. Other awards include a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the PEN/Beyond Margins Award. Akpan divides his time between Nigeria and the United States. He is a Cullman Center Fellow for 2014 and is writing a novel called Las Vegas, My Village.

Mohammed Naseehu Ali (Ghana) was shortlisted in 2008. His first book, a collection of short stories titled The Prophet of Zongo Street, was published in 2006, described in the New York Times as “moving, subtle and ingeniously constructed”.

Sefi Atta (Nigeria), shortlisted in 2006, is the author of three novels Everything Good Will Come, Swallow and A Bit of Difference, and the short story collection News From Home. Winner of the PEN International 2004/5 David T.K. Wong Prize, she also won the first Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa in 2006 for Everything Good Will Come, and the final NOMA Award for Publishing in Africa in 2009 for Lawless and other stories, now published as News From Home. Her publishers include Interlink Books in the USA, AAA Press in Nigeria, Jacana Media in South Africa and Fourth Estate in the UK..

Doreen Baingana (Uganda) is the Managing Editor of StoryMoja in Nairobi. Featuring stories shortlisted for the Caine Prize in 2004 and 2005, her collection of short stories, Tropical Fish: Stories out of Entebbe, won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize Best First Book Award (Africa region) in 2006. It was also awarded an Associated Writers and Writing Programmes Award for short fiction and was published by the University of Massachusetts Press. She has also won the Washington Independent Writers Fiction Prize, and an Emerging Writer’s Fellowship from The Writer’s Center. Her stories and essays have appeared in journals such as Glimmer Train, African American Review, Callaloo, Guardian (UK), and Kwani. She has an M.F.A. from University of Maryland and was a Writer-in-Residence there.

Ken Barris (South Africa), shortlisted in 2003 and 2010, is a poet and writer. He has won a Thomas Pringle Award and an Ad Donker Award for his short stories, the M-Net Book Prize for his novel, The Jailer’s Book, and the Sydney Clouts Award as well as the Ingrid Jonker Prize for his poetry. His novel What Kind of Child was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize (Best Book Africa), the Herman Charles Bosman Fiction Prize and the M-Net Book Prize. His new novel, Life Underwater, was published in May 2012 by Kwela Books and won the University of Johannesburg Literary Prize in 2013. In 2014 Jacana published his co-authored novel Sunderland with Mike Cope.

Jenna Bass (South Africa), writing as Constance Myburgh was shortlisted in 2012 for her story “Hunter Emmanuel”. She is a South African filmmaker, photographer, writer and retired magician. Her award-winning short film set in Zimbabwe, “The Tunnel”, premiered at the Sundance and Berlin Film Festivals and continues to screen internationally. Her debut feature film, “Love The One You Love” filmed in Cape Town, will premiere in 2014. Jenna is also the editor and co-creator of Jungle Jim, a pulp-literary magazine for African writing.

Darrel Bristow-Bovey (South Africa), shortlisted in 2006, won the Percy FitzPatrick Prize for Youth Literature in 2009 for his young adult novel SuperZero, published by Tafelberg. His first book, I Moved Your Cheese, was translated into four languages and sold all around the world, most notably Brazil (in Portuguese translation) and India, where it topped the English best-seller lists for several months. His second book, The Naked Bachelor, was a chart-topper in Singapore.

Shimmer Chinodya (Zimbabwe), shortlisted in 2000, won the NOMA Award for African Publishing in 2007 for his novel Strifepublished by Weaver Press. His novella for teens Tale of Tamari was published in 2004 and his novel Chairman of Fools in 2005. His fourteenth book Tindo’s Quest, a novel for young people, was published by Longman Zimbabwe in 2011. In 2012 Weaver Press published his latest collection of short stories entitled Chioniso and Other Stories.

Mia Couto (Mozambique), shortlisted in 2001, is one of the most prominent writers in Portuguese-speaking Africa. In 2007, he became the first African author to win the prestigious Latin Union literary prize, which has been awarded annually in Italy since 1990. A number of his books are published in the UK by Serpent’s Tail includingA River Called Time, Under the Frangipani, Sleepwalking Land and Last Flight of the Flamingo. His most recent novel L'accordeur de silences (The Tuner of Silences) was published in 2012. Couto received the 2013 Camões Prize for Literature, a prestigious award given to Portuguese-language writers and he was awarded the prestigious Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 2014. The $50,000 prize is sponsored by the University of Oklahoma, the Neustadt family, and World Literature Today, the university’s award-winning magazine of international literature and culture.

George Makana Clark (Zimbabwe), shortlisted in 2003, published his first novel The Raw Man with Jonathan Cape in April 2011. He is shortlisted for the Newton First Book Award.

Florent Couao-Zotti (Benin)was shortlisted in 2002 for his story “Small Hells on Street Corners” from Fools, Thieves and Other Dreamers – Stories from Francophone Africa Weaver Press, Harare (2001). He teaches literature in secondary schools, and has written plays, comic scripts, and novels as well as short stories. His novel If the sheep’s yard is dirty, it's not for the pig to say it (The Plumed Serpent, Paris) won the Amadou Kourouma prize in Geneva (Switzerland) in 2010.

Emmanuel Dongala (Congo-Brazzaville) was shortlisted in 2003. He won the 2004 Cezam Prix Littéraire Inter CE for his novel Jonny Chien Méchant (Jonny Mad Dog) which was made in to a film set in Liberia in 2008. He is currently Richard B. Fisher Chair in Natural Sciences at Bard College at Simon's Rock.

Nurrudin Farah (Somalia), shortlisted in 2001, has written more than ten novels. His latest novel, Crossbones was published by Riverhead Press in 2011.

Muthoni Garland (Kenya), shortlisted in 2006, is a founder member of StoryMoja, a writers’ collective based in Nairobi. In 2009 she published the romance Halfway between Nairobi and Dundori through StoryMoja. She also writes for children under the name Muthoni Muchemi.

Rachelle Greeff (South Africa) was shortlisted in 2003 for her story “Tell him it is never too late”. In 2005 she won the Stellenbosch Woordfees, Protea Boekehuis, and LitNet's national short story competition with her story “Swiets in Rhodesië”. Her play, Die naaimasjien (The Sewing Machine), won the Nagtegaal prize for texts in 2008. At the Klein Karoo National Arts Festival (KKNK) it won the Herrie Kanna Popularity Prize as well as the 2010 Fleur du Cap for Best Indigenous Text. The play had its origins in a short story that appeared in BY (Saturday supplement to Die Burger). Her second play, Buitepos, opens at the 2012 Woordfees in Stellenbosch. The Sewing Machine will be performed at the Edinburgh Festival this year.

Pede Hollist (Sierra Leone) was shortlisted in 2013 for his story “Foreign Aid” and is an associate professor of English at the University of Tampa, Florida. His first novel So the Path Does not Die, published in 2012 by Langaa Press, Cameroon, was named the African Literature Association 2013 creative writing book of the year. His short stories, “Going to America,” “BackHomeAbroad,” and “Resettlement” have appeared in Ìrìnkèrindò: A Journal of African Migration, on the Sierra Leone Writers Series website, and in Matatu 41-12 respectively.

Allan Kolski Horwitz (South Africa) shortlisted in 2001 was a founding member of the Botsotso Jesters and Botsotso Publishing. His first book of poems Call from the Free State was published in 1979. Substantial selections of his poetry have been included in Essential Things (COSAW, 1992) and Throbbing Ink (Timbila, 2003) and his fiction has been included in two collections – Unity in Flight (2001) and Un/common Ground (2002). A collection of flash fiction, Out of the Wreckage, was published in 2008 and Meditations of a Non-White White in 2012 by Dye Hard Press. There are Two Birds at My Window, a collection of poetry, was also published this year by Dye Hard Press. Allan has also published two plays The Pump Room (2011); Comrade Babble (2012) and a children’s Book Blue Wings (2008) through Botsotso.

Abubakar Adam Ibrahim (Nigeria) was shortlisted in 2013 for his story “The Whispering Trees” published in his short story collection, The Whispering Trees (Parresia Publishers, Lagos, 2012). He is a Gabriel Garcia Marquez Fellow and won the BBC African Performance Prize in 2007.

Mamle Kabu (Ghana) was shortlisted in 2009 for her story “The End of Skill”. She has had eight other short stories published in various anthologies and journals. She has also written for young adults under the name Mamle Wolo and won the 2011 Burt Award for African Literature with her novel The Kaya-Girl. She is a director of the Writers’ Project for Ghana and is turning “The End of Skill” into a novel. She has been selected for a full fellowship at the 47th session of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa this autumn and has been offered a follow-on residency with the City of Asylum/Pittsburgh, thereafter.

Billy Kahora (Kenya), shortlisted in 2012 for his story “Urban Zoning”, is the managing editor of the Kenyan literary journal Kwani? and author of the non-fiction novella The True Story of David Munyakei (2009). His writing has appeared in Granta, McSweeney’s, Kwani?, Chimurenga and Vanity Fair. His short story “Treadmill Love” was highly commended by the 2007 Caine Prize judges. He is working on a novel titled The Applications and is shortlisted for the 2014 Caine Prize.

Parselelo Kantai (Kenya), shortlisted in 2004 and 2009 is one of Africa’s leading investigative journalists. He held a Reuters Fellowship for his nonfiction and completed an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of London. He contributes to the Financial Times and The East African among many other publications and recently penned “The Rainbow Nation through African Eyes” for The Africa Report (June/July 2010).

Tim Keegan (South Africa), shortlisted in 2011, has published three novels, one of which, Tromp's Last Stand, is a detective story set in Cape Town. His last novel My Life with the Duvals was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Africa section) in 2009.

Stanley Onjezani Kenani (Malawi)was shortlisted in 2012 for his story “Love on Trial” and in 2008 for “For Honour” which was also shortlisted for the HSBC/SA PEN Award in 2007. His debut collection For Honour and other stories was published by Random House Struik in South Africa in 2011, and was the first publication in their e-khaya electronic book series. A poet who is also an accountant, Kenani lives and works in Geneva, Switzerland. He is currently finalising his debut novel, Drama Republic.

Rory Kilalea (Zimbabwe), shortlisted in 2000 and 2002, won a BBC World Service African Performance prize in 2004 for his half-hour drama for radio, Colours, which he wrote at the Caine Prize Writers’ Workshop in 2003. Colours also won the Susie Smith Award in 2009 from Oxfam, which is awarded to a single piece of writing on HIV and AIDS from sub-Saharan Africa. His 2002 shortlisted story “Zimbabwe Boy” was produced as a play in London at the National Theatre and at the African Festival in 2005. He is currently teaching film at the MET film school at Ealing Studios in London and travels to teach workshops and direct shows around the world.

Lauri Kubuitsile (Botswana), shortlisted in 2011, won the Golden Baobab Literary Prize in both 2009 and 2010. Her young adult book, Signed,Hopelessly in Love (Tafelberg, 2011) was shortlisted for the M.E.R. Prize for Best Youth Novel in South Africa. The sequel, Signed, The Secret Keeper was published by Diamond Educational Publishers in Botswana in 2013. Her fourth novella Love in the Shadows (Sapphire) was published in 2012. Her shortlisted story is included in her collection of stories set in Botswana, In The Spirit of McPhineas Lata and Other Stories published by HopeRoad (UK) and Hands-on Books (South Africa).

Laila Lalami (Morocco), shortlisted in 2006, published a short story collection Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits (2005) and her first novel, Secret Son, published by Algonquin Books in 2009 was longlisted for the Orange Prize. Her essays and opinion pieces have appeared in Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, The Nation, the Guardian, the New York Times, and in numerous anthologies. Her work has been translated into ten languages. She is the recipient of a British Council Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship, and a Lannan Foundation Residency Fellowship and is currently an associate professor of creative writing at the University of California at Riverside. Her new novel, The Moor’s Account, will be published by Pantheon in 2014.

Lily Mabura (Kenya) was shortlisted in 2010. Her collection of short stories How Shall We Kill the Bishop? was published by Pearson’s African Writers Series in March 2012.

Jamal Mahjoub (Sudan), shortlisted in 2005. His novels have been widely translated.Travelling with Djinns was awarded the Prix de l'Astrolabe at the St Malo festival in France; Carrer Princesa gained the NH Mario Vargas Llosa prize in Spain. He also won the Guardian/Heinemann African short story award for The Cartographer's Angel. He has recently started a new life in Crime under the pseudonym Parker Bilal.

David Medalie (South Africa) was shortlisted in 2011, for his story “The Mistress's Dog” which also won the Thomas Pringle Award in 2008. His debut novel, The Shadow Follows, published in 2006, was shortlisted for a Commonwealth Literary Award and the M-Net Literary Award.

Lilia Momple (Mozambique) shortlisted in 2001, was Secretary General of the Mozambique Writers' Association from 1995 to 2001 and President from 1997 to 1999. She was appointed to the UNESCO Executive Council in 2001. Her novel Neighbours was re-published by Penguin Global in April 2012.

Hassounah Mosbahi (Tunisia), shortlisted in 2001, features in Sardines and Oranges, a collection of short stories from North Africa published by Banipal in 2005.

Charles Mungoshi (Zimbabwe), shortlisted in 2000, has won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (Africa region) twice for two collections of short stories The Setting Sun and theRolling World(1987) and Walking Still(1997). Two of his novels, Waiting for the Rain (1975) and Ndiko Kupindana Kwa mazuva (1975), received International PEN awards. A prolific writer in English and Shona, Mungoshi won the NOMA Award for his collection of children’s stories,Stories from a Shona Childhood (1989). Most recently his short story “Sins of the Fathers” was translated into Shona for the anthology Mazambuko published by Weaver Press in 2010.

Melissa Tandiwe Myambo (Zimbabwe), shortlisted in 2012 for her story “La Salle de Départ”, is the author of Jacaranda Journals (Macmillan South Africa, 2004: www.jacarandajournals.com), a collection of short stories set in Zimbabwe. Her work has also been published in Prick of the Spindle, Chelsea Station, The Montréal Review, The Journal of African Travel Writing, 34th Parallel, Opening Spaces: an anthology of contemporary African women’s writing and Wasafiri. “La Salle de Départ” is part of her new collection tentatively entitled Airport Stories. Melissa is currently a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at University of California, Los Angeles where she is completing a nonfiction book entitled “The American Dream Abroad: Privileged Migrants in the Global South Africa.” Links to her other works can be found on her website www.homosumhumani.com. Most recently, she is the author of {Parenthesis}, an electronic chapbook for charity.

Mukoma wa Ngugi (Kenya), shortlisted in 2009, published his first novel Nairobi Heat in 2009 (Penguin, SA). In 2010, he was shortlisted for the Penguin Prize for African Writing for his novel manuscript, The First and Second Books of Transition. Editions of Nairobi Heat have also been published in Kenya (East African Publishers) and Nigeria (Cassava Republic Press). The sequel Black Star Nairobi was published in 2013. Mukoma is an Assistant Professor of English at Cornell University, specializing in twentieth-century Anglophone African literature.

Chinelo Okparanta (Nigeria), was shortlisted in 2013 for her story “America” published in Granta magazine. She was featured as one of Granta’s six new voices for 2012. She is the author of the short story collection Happiness, Like Water, which was a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice and one of The Guardian's Best African Fiction of 2013. A 2014 O. Henry Short Story Prize winner and the winner of the 2014 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, she was also a 2014 Rolex Mentors and Protégés Arts Initiative Finalist in Literature and a finalist for the 2014 New York Public Young Lions Fiction Award. Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Tin House, Subtropics, The Kenyon Review, among other journals. She has been nominated for a United States Artists Fellowship in Literature and long-listed for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award.

Ike Okonta (Nigeria), shortlisted in 2005 for his story "Tindi in the Land of the Dead", is the Editor in Chief of Nigeria Magazine in Abuja.

Gill Schierhout (South Africa), shortlisted in 2008, had her first novel, The Shape of Him, published by Jonathan Cape in 2009.

Namwali Serpell (Zambia), shortlisted in 2010, won the 2011 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, which is given annually to six women writers who demonstrate excellence and promise in the early stages of their careers. Her work has appeared in the journal Callaloo, as well as the Bidoun and The Believermagazines. Her shortlisted story, “Muzungu,” was selected by Alice Sebold for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories 2009 and anthologized inThe Uncanny Reader (St. Martins, 2014). She published a story called "Bottoms Up" in Tin House's Science Fiction issue, an essay called "Tractatus Doctoro-Philosophicus" in a volume, Should I Go to Grad School? (Bloomsbury, 2014), and has a story called "Company" forthcoming in McSweeney's this summer. Namwali is an Assistant Professor in the English Department at the University of California, Berkeley. Her first critical monograph is entitled Seven Modes of Uncertainty (Harvard, 2014). She is currently working on a book of essays, About Faces, and a novel, TheFurrow. Namwali has been selected as part of Africa39.

Alex Smith (South Africa), shortlisted in 2010, published her second novel Four Drunk Beauties the same year. It went on to win the Nielsen Booksellers' Choice award in 2011 and in 2012 it was published in Turkish. Alex’s third novel Agency Blue won a silver medal in the Sanlam Youth Literature awards. Her shortlisted story “Soulmates” was also shortlisted for the 2009 PEN/Studinski Award judged by JM Coetzee and is published in the New Writing from Africa anthology. A new novel for teens Devilskein and Dearlove is published this year by Arachne Press in the UK and Penguin Random House South Africa.

Ada Udechukwu (Nigeria) was shortlisted in 2007 for her story “Night Bus”. She is an artist and poet associated with the Nsukka Group.

Chika Unigwe (Nigeria), shortlisted in 2004, was shortlisted in 2006 for the Dutch equivalent of the Orange Prize for her novel translated into Dutch, de fenicks. She won the 2003 BBC Short Story Competition for her story “Borrowed Smile”, a Commonwealth Short Story Award for Weathered Smiles and a Flemish literary prize for De Smaak van Sneeuw. Her second novel, On Black Sisters’ Street, first published in Dutch, was published in Chika’s own English version by Jonathan Cape in 2009 and Random House in 2011 and won the Nigerian Prize for Literature. Her most recent novel Nightdancer was published in June 2012 by Jonathan Cape. She won the 2013 Sylt Foundation African Writer’s Residency Award.

Uzor Maxim Uzoatu (Nigeria), shortlisted in 2008, is the author of the collection God of Poetry. In 2010, his play Doctor of Football was published in Nigeria.

Abdourahman Waberi (Djibouti), shortlisted in 2000, has been a member of the International Jury for the Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage (Berlin, Germany), 2003 & 2004, was awarded with several honours including the Stefan-Georg-Preis in 2006. He has lived in Berlin as a guest of DAAD in 2007. His novel In The United States of Africa came out 2009. In 2010, he was a William F. Podlich Distinguished Fellow and a visiting professor at Claremont McKenna College, California, a jury member of the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and an Academie de France Villa Medici fellow in Roma, Italy. He published his novel Passage of Tears with Seagull Books in 2011, distributed in the USA by the University of Chicago Press.

Workshop Participants
Among participants in the Caine Prize African Writers’ workshops, which have taken place annually since 2003, Eritrean writer Sulaiman Addonia’s first novel, The Consequences of Love, was published by Chatto & Windus in 2008, and Petina Gappah had a collection of her short stories, set in her native Zimbabwe and named for her Caine Prize workshop story An Elegy for Easterly, published by Faber and Faber in 2009. Niq Mhlongo has published three novels Dog Eat Dog (Kwela, 2004), After Tears (Kwela, 2007) and Way Back Home (2013) and Siphiwo Mahala published a novella When a Man Cries (UKZN Press, 2007) and a collection of short stories African Delights (Jacana, 2011). Yewande Omotoso, who participated in the 2012 workshop in South Africa, had her debut novel Bom Boy (Modjaji Books, 2011) won the South African Literary Award for First Time Author and was shortlisted for the South African Sunday Times Fiction Award 2012.

Registered charity number: 1039039
Africa95 is a company Limited by Guarantee; Registered in England & Wales; Company No 02813337
The Caine Prize for African Writing is a registered trademark in the UK